In the following essay, Brown delineates the central thematic concerns of Hero and Leander and assesses its influence on the literary culture of the 1590s.

Why did Marlowe write Hero and Leander? Most critics have attempted to answer this question by approaching the poem as an essay on love. William Keach, for example, maintains that Marlowe's poem is about “the risks, limitations and disappointments of romantic love.”1 Marlowe's intentions are ultimately unrecoverable, but one way of approaching the question is to consider Marlowe's poem in its generic context. Hero...